Monthly Archives: September 2011

Sep 30 2011

That’s Odd…

Tonight or tomorrow I’ll finish Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. Yes, I’m still reading Koontz.  Leave me alone.  But you may be pleased to know I am going to read something else next that isn’t Koontz, but don’t get used to it because I’m reading another one of his books sometime in October.  So there! Nyuh! Anyhoo…

This book actually took some time for me to warm up to it.  It’s the story of a twenty year old average boy who is a fry cook in a grille.  His real name is Odd Thomas.  His parents are fucked up, but that hasn’t really affected him too much.  He’s your average boy with a cool girlfriend who works in an ice cream shop in a mall.  Odd lives above a garage, keeps things pretty simple, has no car, doesn’t need much.  Oh, and he can see dead people! 

The book is written in first person as if Odd had sat down years later to pen his memoirs.  In this book, we get to know Odd and most of the people in his everyday life, including the ghost of Elvis.  While the characters are colorful and varied and entertaining, I still wasn’t 100% convinced just how much I liked this book. It’s only 399 pages, and has taken me two weeks to read it so I know it must be a much more absorbing read than some of Koontz’s Frankenstein books were which I gobbled up at the rate of one per week.

The base story line of this first book (in a series of four so far, soon to be five), Odd begins to get “odd” feelings about a strange looking man about town.  Odd sees black apparitions which he calls bodachs.  They don’t harm anyone but seem to gather when death is lurking near.  And they are following this strange man around.  Odd is sure a reoccurring bad dream of his is about to come true and somehow involves this man.  When he breaks into his house to have a look around, he discovers the man has a mad obsession with serial killers. And so Odd sets out to try to figure out what the man is up to and how to prevent it.

My main turn off with this book, and I’m afraid it may be Koontz’s pattern in general, I guess I’ll find out when I read other books of his, but Koontz likes to just move the characters around to different places – taking them on this journey almost like a scavenger hunt where they are looking for clues to the puzzle they are trying to solve.  He did that with several of the Frankenstein books and he does it with Odd Thomas. So, the book becomes “a day in the life of” type story for our main character with the reader just following them around.  That’s not a bad thing if each destination we are led too reveals something new, something scary, something profound or more, but that isn’t always the case here.  Most of the time, I just felt like I was one more chapter closer to the end of wrapping this book up.

Another problem is probably that I’ve been desensitized by stories about mediums the past few years from reading various other books and watching TV shows, such as all seven seasons of  Medium from a few years ago. I also became a fan of psychic medium Lisa Williams when she had a show, and I still love medium Chip Coffeey from A&E’s Psychic Kids. 

So, while I kept waiting for something new in Odd Thomas to really capture me, there really isn’t much.  Sure, he’s a lovable “odd” little guy, enough of a good character to make me want to read the others in the series, but I’m in no hurry to start another one right away.  Koontz definitely has some good writing here.  I was dog earing several pages that had quotes I wanted to remember and come back to.  But…it’s a lot like if Koontz jumped on the vampire train, say next year, with his take on vampires.  There probably isn’t much of anything new he could bring to the genre.  Vampire Elvis?  I hope not.

Sep 29 2011

The Urban Gardener: If you see my porch, mums the word!

I couldn’t resist a few mums on Sunday at the farmers market when I went to get some red apples.  They were $2.99 each so I bought six of them for the small planters on my front porch.  I plan on getting two larger mums for the two larger planters to complete the fall ensemble for the front porch.  Medium sized pumpkins were just $2.99 also so I picked up two of those.  Next thing you know, I had put out the ghosts and tombstones in the yard as well.

I love autumn!

Mums supposedly come back every year, but I never get them planted in the ground quick enough.  I’ve always had them in pots and the frost usually gets to them before I can think about transplanting them.  A friend once told me that if you do put them in the ground, they can bloom in the spring if you want them to but if you don’t want them to bloom early, you should cut the blooms off  before they open, allowing them to sprout later.  Maybe I’ll give that a try with some of these before it gets too cold.

Anyone else have any luck with mums planted in your beds?

Sep 28 2011

The Urban Gardener: Allium Graceful

I didn’t get the alliums planted on Sunday like I had originally planned. Since I was potting those mums for the front porch and making soup in the crock and other things around the house, I ran out of time.  I’m still undecided on where to put them anyway.  It needs to be some place where they will have the most impact. And I’m definitely thinking about two clusters of them.  My purple alliums are spaced out throughout the beds, and I think now they’d look better in clumps.

I’m excited about this one and hope it does well next spring because it is white.  We don’t have a lot of white flowers although we did plant some Shasta Daisies this year.  I also have a white iris that I planted last October, but it did not bloom this year at all.

There are 10 bulbs total, so I’m thinking about two clumps of 5 either in the front or the kidney shaped bed in the middle of the back yard.  Oh well, I’ll get them in the ground sometime this week.

Sep 27 2011

The Big C Finale: Paul?

Cathy reaches the finish line!

Did you watch the season finale of The Big C last night?  If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read this. But just know this…it was awesome and ended with a big questionable cliff hanger.

Cathy decides to run the New Year’s marathon after taking Lee’s number when she was too late to sign up.  She goes to congratulate her old doctor on his engagement and he advises her not to run, but she sets out to do it anyway.

Cathy discovers Paul’s little cocaine addiction, but he assures her its no problem.  Rather than throwing it out, he uses up the rest of it on his way to battle it out with the insurance company who won’t pay a claim for Cathy’s treatment and stopped taking his calls.  He crashes their New Year’s Eve party with an awesome “Gosh, I wish I could do that!” scene where he really goes off on them and makes the party a bit uncomfortable.

Paul and Lee

Meanwhile, Cathy starts the race late but she isn’t giving up. Shawn, her brother, joins her for the first few miles and then gives up.  Her old doctor and her son, Adam, are there cheering her own.  It takes all night, but Cathy finally reaches the finish line where the young doctor, Shawn, and her son are all waiting for her and cheering her own.  Then, up steps the spirits of Lee and Marlene to cheer as well.  And last but not least, Paul shows up too. Cathy says “Everyone is here!”  And then Adam says, “Except Dad!”  Cathy takes a second look and notices Paul is standing next to Lee and Marlene.

Cut to a scene of Paul lying on the ground and being attended to by paramedics and he’s obviously flat lined after the stresses of dealing with the insurance company and overdosing on coke. Cathy falls to the ground when she realizes what’s happening, and her loved ones rush to her. Fade to black.

So, is Paul really dead?  I actually don’t think so.  I think he’ll be revived successfully.  If not, then that’s 3 characters that were killed off this season: Paul, Lee, and the unborn baby Cathy.

Guess we’ll have to wait till next year to find out.  What a great season this was!

 

Sep 26 2011

Broccoli Cheese Soup for The Crock

Last winter, J and I experimented with Broccoli Cheese soup using a big ole block of Velveeta as the cheese base.  It was the best ever!  We made it on the stove top, but I wanted to make a batch on Sunday using our new crock pot.   I found a pretty good recipe over at food.com. I thought this recipe was unique because it uses both green peppers and onions.  I’ve found some recipes that even include carrots.  But I am making this even more super simple by leaving the peppers out.  J isn’t a fan of them anyway in soups because they can sometimes be bitter. But we have to have onions!

I normally use a bit of flower as a thickener in a soup like this, but this recipe doesn’t call for it.  Instead, it uses cream of chicken soup so I’m going to try that. I also found recipes that don’t add the cheese to the crock. They cook all other ingredients in the crock and then add the cheese just before serving.  I didn’t like that idea, so I was glad to find this recipe that adds the cheese up front.  Here are the ingredients:

1 10 oz. bag of frozen broccoli (I used the Jolly Green Giant Steamer kind and chopped up some of the larger florets.)
1 can of cream of chicken soup (Good ole Campbell’s Condensed)
1 medium chopped yellow onion
1 and 1/2 cups of milk
1 stick of butter (The recipe only calls for two tablespoons to sautee the onions.)
1 lb. of Velveeta Cheese chopped

I added the milk and soup to my crock immediately and turned it on low.  Chopped the onion and sauteed it on low heat in the two pats of butter until almost translucent. With the onions on the stove, I chopped the cheese and added it to the crock. Onions done – poured those in the crock and topped off with the broccoli after cutting up some of the larger pieces. I took the remainder of the stick of butter and chopped it up and threw it in the crock because I knew it would help with flavor.

I cooked it on low for a good six to seven hours before serving it.  We top it with bacon bits, oyster crackers, chopped green onions, and a dab of sour cream.  We each had a bowl for a late lunch and then again for dinner!  Yummy!!  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of it for the blog.  But take my word for it, it was awesome.

Sep 25 2011

The Urban Gardener: Fall Bulb Planting

The last of my Fall bulbs arrived this week.    25 Quail Daffodil bulbs and 10 Graceful Alliums.

I planted the daffodil yesterday.  I scattered a few in two beds just as filler and put a few in the border along the pathway.  The majority were planted along the front walkway in between the daffodils that came up there this past spring.  Those did really well and I hope they all come back up again next year.  If so, these smaller quail variety will be a nice pop of color in between the others.

The Quail Daffodil produced a small bouquet of flowers with 2 to 3 smaller blooms on each stem, and they are that bright traditional buttercup yellow.

I’ll plant the Alliums today and post about them tomorrow…I still have to find a place to put them.

But with this post, it means my Urban Gardener feature is quickly coming to a close for the year.  It’s been a great year, and our best growing season yet when it comes to the gardens and beds.

Sep 24 2011

Impartial Musings of the Uninspired

Looking back on today, it was an odd one of sorts. I ran into an old acquaintance in the grocery store this morning, someone who lives close by but isn’t really a close friend of sorts.  We don’t hang out, although we have before.  Not really sure why.  He’s not even someone we like all that much, which is a shame.  He’s a nice guy and all.  We each had plenty of questions for each other about how the year is going for each of us.  Enough conversation to fill a few minutes there in front of the canned soup.

While standing in line to check out, I had a completely one sided conversation with the cashier.  I rambled on about how their $10 dollar Thursday always falls on the week that I don’t get paid, and how banks are going to start charging debit card fees according to the news.  The kind of air filler that bores me to tears and yet here I was filling the air with nonsense and shit.  And I kept thinking about myself, who is this person?  I’m sure the cashier was thinking it too.

I stopped to get gas after the grocery store and a black man at the next pump comments to me about how gas has gone down. I paid $2.80 a gallon after my coupon!  I commented, “That’s the only thing that’s gone down.”  It made him laugh.  And then I said the government lowered the price because America was pissed off about everything else.  He liked that comment too.  I bet he went home and repeated it to his loved ones.

I went to get my haircut and the stylist, who has cut my hair before, mentions people who ramble on about nonsense in the chair and she just says to them, “Honey, I cut hair. That’s about it.”  Then she said, “But if you wanna talk about gas prices, that’s a conversation I can go on all day about.”  So, we spent about 10 minutes discussing how much we’d paid for gas today.  Who is this boring person I’ve become?

While outside planting bulbs this afternoon, I noticed my next door neighbor was working in his yard.  He was tearing out the railroad tie wall that separates his yard from ours.  He spotted me so I walked over and commented.  He told me he was going to put in a stone brick wall.  I told him that would be nice.  We commented on how nice the weather was now and I told him he’d picked a perfect time of year to do it.  Then, I walked away and realized that was the most I’d ever said to the poor man in the five years we’ve lived next door to each other.

I moved to the front yard to finish my bulb planting and my neighbor from across the street came out and walked over.  He’s a nice old man who fought in a bunch of wars and loves to talk about how the army was back in the day.  “You wanna know what the coldest state in the Union is?  Korea,” he has said to us on more than one occasion.  Today he told me that lots of people thought he’d died way back when after he came home to the Bronx after the first war he fought in. “Cause that’s how the government was back then.  People thought you was dead and didn’t believe you when you told them you weren’t.”  I asked how his wife was doing, a woman I’ve only seen once since we’ve lived here.  I knew she was ill and didn’t get out much.  He told me she’d died earlier this month.  I suddenly didn’t feel so bad about listening to his war stories.  He then informed me that he knew he was alone because he’d started talking to the walls and that life was for the birds.

We are all like birds sometimes, aren’t we?  Eager for someone to feed us whether that be by talking to us or just listening to us.  Most of the time we shit on those people.

Sep 24 2011

The Mad Writer

I’ve accomplished very little this year as far as writing goes thanks to all of the other things in life I could blame: couponing, blogging, reading, gardening…you know, all those things I’ve been filling up my site with here each and every day.  By the way, my blog post a day is still going strong this year!  I haven’t missed a day yet.

J is out of town this weekend and next to visit family and attend a wedding.  Despite my regular chores this weekend like laundry and grocery shopping, I plan to take full advantage of the alone time, or at least that’s my plan.  Heck, this is Saturday’s post I’m writing and scheduling it on Friday morning!

Last weekend, while I was out of town, I spent the 3 hour drive down there and back doing a lot of thinking, as I always do on long trips.  But, I basically plotted out my entire next novel.  This is a book I’ve mentioned before on here and have been working on – off and on – for the past 5 years.  You might remember a recent post where I mentioned that I was going to change the lead character from male to female.  No sexual reassignment surgeries needed when you are writing!  Ha!

But, I was still having trouble with another character and some scenes I’d written a long time ago which I thought were still crucial to the book.  I also had no idea how the book should end.  A three hour trip to Tennessee cured that.  So, this weekend I’m sitting down and starting over (Again!) from the start.  Wish me luck!

It’s gonna be a mad weekend.

Check back on Monday to see how I did.  I’ll post more about it then.

Sep 23 2011

Good-Bye Lee…

I missed The Big C on Showtime again this week on Monday so I had to catch the rerun on Thursday.  Since, it’s now been five days since it aired, I’m not worried about ruining it for anyone.  So, if you Tivo’ed it and haven’t watched it yet, you might not want to read this.

Ever since its first season last year, The Big C has tugged at my heart strings every time, and maybe that’s what keeps me watching.  I need something on TV to stir me on the inside and remind me how precious life really is out here.

Lee died last night.  For those who don’t know, Cathy met Lee this season in her clinical trial and though they’ve had their differences, they were “mole” mates.  That’s what they called themselves.  Lee taught Cathy about good wine, and even took Cathy and Paul out to a gay bar one night.

The clinical trial was working for Cathy, but not for Paul.  This caused some tense situations between the two, and caused Paul to finally leave the trial all together.  Last night, Cathy called him and left a message and he called her back.  Despite needing to get ready for their trip to Rome, Cathy went to see him only to discover he was ready to go.  Cathy stayed with him all night and said her good-byes and wish him safe travels, but got the best gift ever when she got home.  Sean had returned home.

The season finale is next week!  If you haven’t been watching this show, do catch up.  It’s one of the best and it’s full of real emotion.

Sep 22 2011

More Flash Fiction From Yours Truly

Check out Apocrypha and Abstractions today for another flash fiction piece from yours truly.

This one is called The Town Gossip.  I wrote this as a longer piece back in college for a creative writing workshop.  I wanted to focus on the unreliable narrator aspect of a story in which each person in the story is “guilty as charged” but not telling the truth about what happened to the lead character.  Picture it as if each of these people were being questioned by the police and obviously lying about what happened, but instead of all the legal banter, it reads more like…town gossip.

Enjoy!  And let me know what you think.